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After a year of being teased, we finally got a full trailer this week for the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. It answered many questions but also raised new ones.

The Monday night trailer drop was immediately followed by the start of advance ticket sales for the Dec. 18 movie release, through Cineplex.com and other exhibitors worldwide. The online gold rush jammed circuits worse than an R2-D2 malfunction.

Even Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister-designate, got in on the act. The same night his Liberals roared to a governing majority in the federal election, he viewed the Star Wars trailer with his family. He was photographed watching his two young sons duel with toy light sabres.

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What did we actually learn from the trailer? Quite a bit, but little of it is confirmed. Director J.J. Abrams and the corporate forces behind him, Lucasfilm and Disney, have taken rigorous precautions to keep the plot of this seventh Star Wars episode top secret.

British actress Daisy Ridley is assuming the main hero role in The Force Awakens, similar to Mark Hamill’s Jedi Knight trainee Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy.
(LUCASFILM / WALT DISNEY STUDIOS)

We can, however, tease out at least five things from the evidence at hand, with the assistance of fan speculation online:

1. The action picks up 30 years after events in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, long enough for younger people to wonder if stories about the Force and the dark side and Jedi Knights are real.

“It’s true,” Harrison Ford’s Han Solo says. “All of it.”

2. British actress Daisy Ridley is assuming the main hero role in The Force Awakens, similar to Mark Hamill’s Jedi Knight trainee Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy.

Her scavenger character Rey is every bit as resourceful as Luke, who so far has been barely seen and heard from. And her roly-poly sidekick droid BB-8 recalls Luke’s mechanical pal R2-D2.

3. Adam Driver’s villainous Kylo Ren, along with having a cool crossbar light sabre first glimpsed in last year’s teaser, harbours ambitions to follow in Darth Vader’s despotic footsteps with the First Order, an evil organization that morphed out of the vanquished Empire. “I will finish what you started,” he says, as Vader’s crumpled face mask suddenly flashes onscreen.

4. Han Solo and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia got happily married after all, but now they’re very worried about something. They’re briefly seen embracing in a manner that suggests great concern — Leia seems to be crying. Are they fearful for the fate of the galaxy or their daughter, who many fans think is Rey?

5. Right from the first teaser last year, John Boyega’s character Finn was hinted to be an Imperial Stormtrooper who is trying to go straight. He was trained to be a ferocious TIE Fighter but now says, “I have nothing to fight for.” Oscar Isaac’s X-Wing pilot character Poe Dameron, meanwhile, seems to be having trouble choosing between the light and the dark sides. He’s seen screaming at someone who appears to be Kylo Ren.

The most likely thing of all? Barring any galactic leaks, the full story of The Force Awakens won’t be known until Dec. 18, or very near it.

Reservoir Dames: Quentin Tarantino’s breakthrough crime drama Reservoir Dogs was filmed as an all-male movie, but it doesn’t have to stay that way, especially when the cause is good. Chandler Levack leads a Feminist Live Read of Reservoir Dogs Oct. 27 at the U of T’s Innis Town Hall, from 7 to 10 p.m. Proceeds go to Elizabeth Fry Toronto, a housing and assistance program for at-risk women. Cast includes Nadia Litz (Mr. Pink), Sook Yin-Lee (Mr. White), Mia Kirshner (Mr. Blonde), Deragh Campbell (Mr. Orange), Mina James (Mr. Brown) and Sabryn Rock (Mr. Blue). Go to http://bit.ly/200Dm9Q for tickets.

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